It's the trash, stupid

The recession may be ending, but the economy is hardly in the pink. Jobs still evaporate, debts mount, household budgets are stretched. Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney's budget proposal calls for tax and fee hikes, reduced spending, pay cuts and layoffs to fill a projected $28 million deficit.

Meeting with editors late last month, Mahoney offered another measure of economic adversity -- a decline in recycling, which she attributes to a lack of consumer spending on goods whose packages fill curbside blue bins.

Sure enough, the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency reports a 15 percent drop in the volume of recyclables recovered so far this year. Non-recyclable trash also is down 8 percent. "When there is less income, there are less disposables, whether trash or recycling," says OCRRA's Kristen Lawton.

A couple of caveats: The county recycling system changed this year, with haulers helping out after one of the county's two recyclers went out of business. Haulers won't report their volume until the end of the year.

In addition, bottle manufacturers are using thinner plastic, and corrugated boxes also contain lighter materials. Shoppers are switching to reusable bags. And newspapers use less paper, which accounts for more than 60 percent of recyclables.

Even with the reductions, however, Onondaga County should keep its No. 1 ranking in the state for per-capita recycling and its No. 2 ranking behind only New York City in tonnage. And with the market for recyclables rebounding from its low point in February, things are looking up -- for resource recovery and, one hopes, for the economy as well.